Re: [PATCH] KVM: arm64: permit MAP_SHARED mappings with MTE enabled

[Cornelia Huck <cohuck@redhat.com>]

[I'm still in the process of trying to grok the issues surrounding
MTE+KVM, so apologies in advance if I'm muddying the waters]

On Sat, Jun 25 2022, Steven Price <steven.price@arm.com> wrote:

> On 24/06/2022 18:05, Catalin Marinas wrote:
>> + Steven as he added the KVM and swap support for MTE.
>> 
>> On Thu, Jun 23, 2022 at 04:49:44PM -0700, Peter Collingbourne wrote:
>>> Certain VMMs such as crosvm have features (e.g. sandboxing, pmem) that
>>> depend on being able to map guest memory as MAP_SHARED. The current
>>> restriction on sharing MAP_SHARED pages with the guest is preventing
>>> the use of those features with MTE. Therefore, remove this restriction.
>> 
>> We already have some corner cases where the PG_mte_tagged logic fails
>> even for MAP_PRIVATE (but page shared with CoW). Adding this on top for
>> KVM MAP_SHARED will potentially make things worse (or hard to reason
>> about; for example the VMM sets PROT_MTE as well). I'm more inclined to
>> get rid of PG_mte_tagged altogether, always zero (or restore) the tags
>> on user page allocation, copy them on write. For swap we can scan and if
>> all tags are 0 and just skip saving them.
>> 
>> Another aspect is a change in the KVM ABI with this patch. It's probably
>> not that bad since it's rather a relaxation but it has the potential to
>> confuse the VMM, especially as it doesn't know whether it's running on
>> older kernels or not (it would have to probe unless we expose this info
>> to the VMM in some other way).

Which VMMs support KVM+MTE so far? (I'm looking at adding support in QEMU.)

>> 
>>> To avoid races between multiple tasks attempting to clear tags on the
>>> same page, introduce a new page flag, PG_mte_tag_clearing, and test-set it
>>> atomically before beginning to clear tags on a page. If the flag was not
>>> initially set, spin until the other task has finished clearing the tags.
>> 
>> TBH, I can't mentally model all the corner cases, so maybe a formal
>> model would help (I can have a go with TLA+, though not sure when I find
>> a bit of time this summer). If we get rid of PG_mte_tagged altogether,
>> this would simplify things (hopefully).
>> 
>> As you noticed, the problem is that setting PG_mte_tagged and clearing
>> (or restoring) the tags is not an atomic operation. There are places
>> like mprotect() + CoW where one task can end up with stale tags. Another
>> is shared memfd mappings if more than one mapping sets PROT_MTE and
>> there's the swap restoring on top.
>> 
>>> diff --git a/arch/arm64/kernel/mte.c b/arch/arm64/kernel/mte.c
>>> index f6b00743c399..8f9655053a9f 100644
>>> --- a/arch/arm64/kernel/mte.c
>>> +++ b/arch/arm64/kernel/mte.c
>>> @@ -57,7 +57,18 @@ static void mte_sync_page_tags(struct page *page, pte_t old_pte,
>>>  	 * the new page->flags are visible before the tags were updated.
>>>  	 */
>>>  	smp_wmb();
>>> -	mte_clear_page_tags(page_address(page));
>>> +	mte_ensure_page_tags_cleared(page);
>>> +}
>>> +
>>> +void mte_ensure_page_tags_cleared(struct page *page)
>>> +{
>>> +	if (test_and_set_bit(PG_mte_tag_clearing, &page->flags)) {
>>> +		while (!test_bit(PG_mte_tagged, &page->flags))
>>> +			;
>>> +	} else {
>>> +		mte_clear_page_tags(page_address(page));
>>> +		set_bit(PG_mte_tagged, &page->flags);
>>> +	}
>
> I'm pretty sure we need some form of barrier in here to ensure the tag
> clearing is visible to the other CPU. Otherwise I can't immediately see
> any problems with the approach of a second flag (it was something I had
> considered). But I do also think we should seriously consider Catalin's
> approach of simply zeroing tags unconditionally - it would certainly
> simplify the code.

What happens in kvm_vm_ioctl_mte_copy_tags()? I think we would just end
up copying zeroes?

That said, do we make any assumptions about when KVM_ARM_MTE_COPY_TAGS
will be called? I.e. when implementing migration, it should be ok to
call it while the vm is paused, but you probably won't get a consistent
state while the vm is running?

[Postcopy needs a different interface, I guess, so that the migration
target can atomically place a received page and its metadata. I see
https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAJc+Z1FZxSYB_zJit4+0uTR-88VqQL+-01XNMSEfua-dXDy6Wg@mail.gmail.com/;
has there been any follow-up?]


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